How would you feel knowing that your parents and grandparents before you, and your children and grandchildren after you were and would be bound to a life of perpetual chattel slavery? How would you resist, react, respond? How would you carve out a life for you and your family? Prompt 2: Why do you think the men of the Massachusetts 54th were willing to risk their lives during the Civil War? What do you think they and other African-Americans were trying to accomplish, what did they want people to know? Could you make a similar sacrifice today? For what, if anything would you be willing to give your life? Why or why not?